memento mori
Search for the truth
Search for, and remember, the truth of your death -- Anon Guest
Fog hid most of the world and it was easy to get lost. She kept close to solid things. Walls, doors, furniture, large appliances, that sort of thing. The fog was in her brain, to. The larger things were even harder to find because of that.
Her name was... She was just... She was lost. That was big enough to deal with. The shadow in the corners was frightening. She could orient to that to. Preferably away from it. She didn't want to go near the shadows in the corners. She was alone. That, too, was large enough to find. Large enough to terrify.
People drifted in and out of the fog, but scream though she might, not one of them heard her. That was absolutely terrifying. They didn't even see her, and no matter what she did. She tried to interfere with what they were doing, to make them confront her existence, but the shadow in the corners loomed every time she went close to trying. Every time the shadow came close, it whispered, "Remember."
But... she couldn't remember. That was the problem. Everything was lost in the fog. Even the walls were changing every time she looked.
"Something bad happened to you," said the shadow. "That's why you're scared."
"Stay away from me!" She fled, finding the stairs. Down into the cellar. Down to the familiar placement of machines, even though the machines themselves changed. Furnace. Washing machine. Dryer. The big, chunky table that had always been her keystone. The big, chunky table and its increasingly flaking paint. Someone had cleared it of the boxes. Someone had scraped off most of the flakes.
Someone had exposed a dark stain.
"Remember," said the shadow. "That is yours."
"The table?" she asked.
"The stain."
She could touch so little in the fog, but she could touch the table. The fog cleared a little when she touched it. Inside and out, the fog cleared. This time, her trembling hands went to the stain.
She remembered...
Pain. A swinging light on a cord, naked and bright.
Red. The gleam of a silver-toned blade.
Screams. Her voice yelling a name she no longer recalled.
When she stepped away from the pain, she watched him. Watched what he did with her body. Watched how he painted over her death stain. Boarded up her body in the walls. Watched as her memory kept trying to find something under the paint.
Now that she remembered, she started poking holes in the plasterboard side of the staircase. Picking away at it, grain by grain, and the shadow let her. It did not help, but it ceased being so frightening.
Now that she remembered, she knew what the shadow was. It had called to her, once, and told her, "Be not afraid." She had been afraid anyway.
The people who exposed the stain also exposed the decaying plastic bag that contained her bones.
She had been alive once. She had been forgotten. She had been hidden. Now she had been found.
"My name was Lucinda," she said. "They kept telling me that I must have made him angry. One night he went too far. He... He killed me. I loved him and he killed me."
"Be not afraid," said the shadow, now a dark angel who comes for everyone. "It is over now. I can take you to a place beyond fear. Beyond pain."
"I wanted to see justice. Will it happen?"
"He lived out his years with guilt walking close behind him," said Death. "I took him to a different place."
It was never too late for justice.
Lucinda nodded, and finally took Death's hand. "I'm ready now."
Finally. She was not afraid.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / sellingpix]
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